Egypt’s Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly has held a recent meeting in Cairo with relevant Egyptian officials to follow up the construction of Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere Hydroelectric Power Station on Stiegler’s Gorge.
The Egyptian construction firm, the Arab Contractors, in partnership with ElSewedy Electric Company had in 2018 won the bid to design and build the Stiegler’s Gorge dam on Rufiji River, which represents for Tanzania a major national project.
The Cairo meeting was attended by Muhammad Shaker, Egypt’s Minister of Electricity and Renewable Energy; Assem al-Gazzar, Minister of Housing and Urban Communities; Yusri Khalil, deputy assistant of foreign affairs minister for Nile Basin countries affairs; Major General Mahmoud Nassar, head of the Central Agency for Reconstruction; and others.
The PM stressed that President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi has directed that the Stiegler’s Gorge Hydroelectric Power Station in Tanzania should be perfectly executed to confirm the capability of the Egyptian contractor sector to achieve mega projects of the highest quality.
According to Dr Gazzar, the project aims at generating 2,115-megawatts of hydroelectric power which will be transferred over 400 k.volt lines. He noted that the project was under study by the Tanzanian government since the 1960s and, in December 2018, Tanzania assigned its execution to the Egyptian construction firm, the Arab Contractors, jointly with ElSewedy Electric Company, at an investment worth USD2.9 billion.
General Nassar explained that the dam controls the flood to protect the surrounding environment from dangers of flooding and swamps, stores some 34 billion cubic metres of water in a new lake reservoir. It ensures all year round water supply for agriculture and fishing, and aims at preserving the wildlife in the largest nature reserve in Africa, and one of the largest in the world.
The project includes the main concrete body of the dam, in addition to four complementary dams to form the 34 billion cubic metre water reservoir. There are also two temporary dams before and behind the main dam, as well as the hydropower generation station. General Nassar said that a residential complex and a road network will be built, as well as a 703 metre tunnel and a concrete bridge. He said that despite the challenge of four floods since December 2019 until March 2020, a large portion of the project has been completed. The project has employed 5233 workers among whom 526 are Egyptian, 3974 Tanzanian, and 733 of other nationalities.
Watani International
6 September 2020
Discussion about this post